


Should Be a Punchline

by Doyle



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Drunkeness, Humor, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 20:11:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Doyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vampire, a werewolf and an ex-god walk into a bar...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Should Be a Punchline

**Author's Note:**

> Set during an AU The Girl in Question.

"A vampire, a werewolf and an ex-god walk into a bar," Spike said, lifting the pint glass to his lips. "Should be a joke."

"Wish I could see the punchline." Morose, Nina dragged her finger along the table, drawing an imaginary circle. She gave it eyes, hair. Fangs. Then she x-ed it out and wished it made her feel better.

"I fail to appreciate this ‘joke´," Illyria said. "And remember your place, vampire. I am a god still."

"No superpowers, no service, love. You´re the original Norwegian Blue, off your perch and pushing up the daisies. You," he cocked a finger at her; she glared at it with disdain, "are an ex-god.’

"And that was all he said?" Nina asked for the tenth time. "He was going to Italy and he´d see me when he got back?"

Spike shrugged. "Don´t take it personally. He was rushing off to see Buffy. Didn´t take time for many fare-thee-wells." The way he said the girl´s name – it was a stupid name, anyway, Nina decided – was half wistful, half pissed. It was all confusing. She´d come in halfway through this act. Spike was in love with Buffy, or with Angel, or possibly with both, and he was jealous as hell at being left behind, and Illyria´d had a fight with Wesley about something, and she was going to need more alcohol if this was going to make sense.

Many empty glasses later, the room was tilted, perspective skewed, and Illyria was talking about sex.

"This human intimacy," she was saying. "It revolts me. And yet… it is intriguing. I would know more."

"Think we can help with that," Spike told her, leaning over the table, voice dropped so low he was practically purring. Nina tried to roll her eyes and ended up giggling instead. Then Spike´s hand was on her knee and that only made her laugh harder. "How ‘bout you?’ he asked. "Up for showing her some of this revolting human intimacy?"

"We´re not human," Nina said, her laughter trailing off.

"Right," Spike grinned. "All got a bit of demon in us. So what say we make it a bit more?"

**

  
"Do I even want to know why you have a key to Angel's place?" Nina asked as the penthouse lock clicked open.

"Probably don't." Spike tossed the key in the air and caught it. It disappeared into his coat. Those pockets looked deep. She wondered what else he'd swiped, whether he'd even paid for the coat itself. "So. Raid his booze cabinet, make some long distance calls or watch his Pay-Per-View?"

"What is this _paper-veoo_?" Illyria demanded, slinking into the room like she expected pay-per-view demons to jump them any second. "Why does Angel have one when I do not?"

"Take it up with Wesley, pet, sure he'd be happy for an excuse to get the Spice Channel."

Nina dropped onto Angel's couch and moaned in pleasure at how soft it was. "The Spice Channel's almost as lame as the Spice Girls. I want tequila." Otherwise she'd soon start to sober up, and sober was bad. "It should be legal for me to marry this couch. And I demand cake and fine wine. The finest wines known to humanity."

"Hey, wonder if Forehead's got that on DVD," Spike said. She watched him with her eyes half closed. The DVDs were hidden behind a fake panel - fancy.

"I wish to commence the sexual relations."

What? Oh, yeah, Spike's big threesome thing. It had seemed funny in the bar, in the way that lots of dumb things were funny when she was drunk, but now the idea of cheating on her boyfriend - was he? - with two people, let alone two of his friends, let alone in his _own apartment_, seemed amazingly stupid and vindictive, and that wasn't her. More than that, it wasn't smart. Even if he was back with his old girlfriend, where the hell was she going to go every full moon if he didn't want her around?

"You two go ahead," she said. "I'll stay here and sleep. Sleep's nice."

Spike didn't sound too upset as he said, "Well, up to you. Door'll be open, feel free to look in."

"Yeah, thanks."

"C'mon, Blue, bedroom's this way."

"Why must we change location? This room is pleasing. It has chairs of animal skin."

However much she loved the leather couch she was lying on, Nina had seen enough websites about the werewolf fur trade to glare at her.

"We're going into the bedroom because it's got a bed," Spike said patiently. "Angel's bed. And that'll piss him off more than if we did it on his sofa. Lots of time to do it on the chairs of animal skin later."

"Whatever," Nina mumbled. "Just push me onto the floor first." She had visions of them just screwing right on top of her snoring form, and then she'd get pushed under the cushions and be trapped forever in the twilight zone where loose change went to die.

"The wolfling would rather sleep than mate. In my time, no mortal would dare reject the affections a god for fear of their flesh being rended from the bone, their entrails strewn across the land so it became barren and cursed."

"Wolfgirl's got an attack of the guilts," Spike said, and she opened her eyes enough to look up at him; he gave her a small nod and she realized he was shrewder than she'd thought. "Let her sleep." And they went into the bedroom, Illyria just giving a last haughty look back at Nina.

They weren't so noisy. She could hear a steady stream of talking, and the squeak of a bed, and every few minutes there'd be the thud of something hitting the floor, and one time the door, but she could mostly tune it out. She'd heard plenty worse. In college, the room right above hers had belonged to a screamer, with a boyfriend who liked to let the whole dorm know he was coming by roaring that he was the king of the world.

So when she couldn't sleep, it had to be something apart from the noise.

She sat up, stroking the couch to reassure it she wasn't leaving it, just taking a little break for a while. Angel's phone had a lot of buttons, and she pressed them till she got someone in Acquisitions and Purges - she blinked, thinking that they must mean mergers, then remembered what kind of clientele used this place - who told her how to make an outside call.

Angel's cell rang for a long time, and she was about to hang up when the ringing stopped. She smiled. "Hey. Sorry if this is a bad time, I wasn't sure of the time difference. I was just missing you."

Someone definitely not Angel said, "'Allo?"

"Uh… hi? Is Angel there?"

"Ah, this, how-you-say, this mobile phone, Angel must have left it in my office! These men, they would leave behind their heads if we did not remind them! They would have no heads!" The Italian woman, whoever she was, let out a riotous laugh. Nina held the phone away from her ear and looked for a volume control.

"Oh. Okay. I'm sorry I disturbed you."

"What disturbing, it's fine, it's wonderful. He will come back from seeing his inamorata, I will give him his phone, he will call you, we will all be happy as fishes."

"Inamorata," Nina said slowly. "That's… girlfriend, right? He's with Buffy?"

The woman's voice dropped, as if they were best girlfriends sharing gossip. "Men, they are such children! Even when they are two, three, many hundred years old! He hears she is with The Immortal and the jealousy, it burns him alive, and he runs to her side as if he was chased by gypsies!" Was she _spitting?_ "We will speak of them no more."

"She's _with_ The Immortal?" She'd had a knot of jealousy in the pit of her stomach all night. Now it felt like she'd swallowed a bowling ball. Funny how Angel had said his ex was in trouble, not that she had a new boyfriend. "Thanks. You've been a big help. You don't have to tell him I called." She slammed down the receiver, cutting off a bubbly stream of reassurances that Angel would no doubt be back soon.

The bedroom door shuddered with a sudden impact. "Hey, tone it down a bit," she heard Spike say. "Not invulnerable, here."

Fuck Angel, fuck Buffy, fuck The Immortal. Nina stalked to the bedroom, tugging her shirt over her head on the way.

**

"Yes… just… _there_." She dug her fingers into Spike's arms, face pressed to the hollow of his throat. Had to remember not to bite, because she wasn't sure a vampire could be a werewolf as well but she didn't want to find out.

Dimly, she registered Illyria complaining about something, but she didn't pay her any attention.

He thrust again and she felt herself tighten around his cock. He'd been talking the whole time, because Spike never seemed to shut up and probably relished the chance to be as filthy as he wanted, but now he stopped, just clutched her, hard, and came.

It didn't feel any different than any other guy she'd screwed without a condom. _What did you expect?_ she thought, _that it would be cold?_

Actually, she kind of had. The first time she'd kissed Angel she'd expected him to be cold, too, not just cool. One of the mysteries of life and undeath, she guessed, like how Spike was so heavy when he was so skinny. She poked him in the side until he rolled off her.

"So that's sex with a corpse," she said, when she could make words go in the order they were supposed to. "It's more energetic than they say."

"You and Angel never…"

"Nope."

"Lucky for you," Spike said. "Between us, he's severely underendowed. Tragic, really."

"You will both afford me more attention."

She wished now that they'd turned off the lights, because Illyria's stare was even more unnerving when it was being directed at her naked body. Not that she thought she had anything to worry about. It was just that Illyria looked so… exotic. The catsuit gone, her skin was mottled with blue, darker at her breasts and the insides of her thighs. Nina could pick out five or six different shades on those long legs alone, and wondered how hard it would be to persuade her to sit still for a couple of studies. And her breasts were -

"You made your boobs bigger!"

"What?" Spike sat up, staring at Illyria's chest. "You sure?"

"Are you kidding? She was smaller than me an hour ago. You know, when you did that thing to her. She's gone up two cup sizes, minimum."

"My physical form is mine to control at will," she said, with unmistakeable smugness.

Spike was gazing at her with the slack-jawed stare of the newly smitten. "Well. That's a fun party trick."

Nina rolled her eyes. "She's been in the twenty-first century, what, two weeks? Already she's brainwashed with this ideal about women just being a vessel for a pair of tits. Illyria, you looked amazing as you were."

"Yeah, whatever she said," Spike mumbled towards her chest.

"Your pulse accelerated," Illyria said. "You began to perspire. Your breath was erratic. For several seconds, your body appeared in the throes of a seizure."

She peeled a clinging strand of hair from her face. "Um. Yeah. That kind of happens. You've never had an orgasm?"

Illyria's head twitched.

"But you and Spike…"

"Hey, don't blame me, not for lack for trying."

She looked her over, taking in the blue, the alien-ness. "Do we know if she even has a clit?"

"She must do, she's got Fred's body, think the girl would've noticed if hers'd gone missing…"

"You will not speak of me as though I were not present."

Nina crawled across the bed on her knees until she was close enough to kiss her, if she wanted to. Illyria really was gorgeous; up close, her skin was all tones and patterns, and her eyes were like blue glass. The more you looked at her, the less you saw Fred.

And she looked like she didn't understand any of this, like it was this thing she'd been trapped with and now she had to deal as best she could. Gods in girls' bodies. Other girls turning into wolves.

Nina reached out and touched her breast, skimming her fingers across the smooth skin. Illyria didn't threaten to take off her hand for the insolence, which was encouraging. Behind them, she felt Spike shift position - she glanced back at him and smirked to see that he was hard again. One thing she could say for vampires, they had stamina.

"Okay," she said. "Let's try some things."

**

She didn't often get hangovers, even after ten shots and half a dozen beers. Sometimes she wished she did. It might make the guilt a bit easier when she woke up alone in her possibly-ex-boyfriend's bed and remembered what had happened.

Crap, crap, crap.

She thought they'd just left her, but when she hauled the sheets out to the door, Spike was on the couch, fully clothed, drinking blood from a crystal glass.

"Morning."

"Hey." She hadn't been able to find all of her clothes - her panties and one sock were still unaccounted for - and she was wearing a robe from the bathroom. It was way too big and covered her almost to her ankles, but she pulled it more securely around herself anyway.

Kind of redundant to be modest about her body now, with a guy who'd helped her explain to an ex-god what a pearl necklace was less than eight hours before. She'd thought he'd be gloating, but he looked subdued, tilting the glass in his hands without drinking.

"Where's Illyria?"

"Her Majesty went to stalk her favourite subject."

"Wesley."

"Probably wants to show him some of her new tricks."

"You think she'll tell him what we did?"

"Bound to. Getting rid of the evidence?"

She shook her head. Her hair was still damp from her four showers, and the chill on the back of her neck made her shiver. "He'll know anyway. I'm guessing vampire sense of smell's almost as good as a werewolf's, and I can smell us all over that room, even without the sheets - me and you, anyway. It's like Illyria doesn't have a scent." She looked down at the heap by her feet. "But at least this way it's not like I'm throwing it in his face."

She expected Spike to argue that that was what they should do, but he just walked to the phone and punched some buttons. "Need a laundry collection at the penthouse. Now. Thanks."

"You knew what extension that was without having to look it up?"

He shrugged. "Spent some time here."

She almost asked when this time was, and why, and what they'd done, and why Angel would hang out with someone he claimed to hate, but she mentally slapped herself. Had Spike given her some kind of sexually transmitted inappropriateness? Angel might be home in a couple of hours. "Just… help me get these outside for the laundry cart."

He actually did what she said, no bitching, which was her biggest sign so far that Spike was feeling guilty, too.

**

It was late when Angel got back. He was wearing a truly hideous red and cream jacket that distracted her from her guilt for a few seconds.

"Nina." He bent to kiss her and she thought, here it comes, he'll taste Spike on me, but he just said, "How'd you get in here?"

"Spike loaned me his keycard." She took a deep breath. "See, I was in the bar downstairs, and Spike came in, and we got talking, and there's something we really need to talk about…"

He knew. She could see in his face the instant he realized - maybe he'd caught the scent. His expression was rarely very open, but now it closed down completely, and that was worse than if he'd started yelling. He sank onto the couch, slumped forward with his elbows on his knees.

"He told you," he said heavily.

"Yeah, he… what?"

"Nina, I'm so sorry." He did that look really well, too, and she couldn't help but sit beside him, grip one of his hands in hers. "I know it's no excuse, but it's different for vampires, it's a family thing - "

He was sleeping with Spike.

Well.

This put things in a more hopeful - not to mention sexy - light.

"And how are things with Buffy?" she asked, because one more person in the relationship she could handle, but two might be awkward unless they bought a bigger bed.

"What? I didn't see Buffy, she was with The Immor… did you move my furniture?"

Dammit, she was sure they'd got the couch back to the right place. "So, you and Spike," she said, and it was like hitting an angst switch. "Angel, it's fine. I'm not angry or upset, or whatever." Or wanting to intimately acquaint him with a stake.

Not a wooden one, anyway.

"You're really - okay with this?"

She squeezed his hand. "You're cute when you're hopeful. I think you should get Spike up here. The three of us should probably talk."

They'd still have to fess up. If he didn't smell them in the bedroom, he'd hear about it - Illyria couldn't place in Ms Tact 2004 if she blew the judges, and Nina had it on Spike's authority that she was very good at that.

She was optimistic. She had a feeling that between the two of them, she and Spike could talk him round. And then, once he'd adjusted, if Illyria wasn't getting what she wanted from Wesley, she could play with them, sometimes.

Or she could just bring Wesley with her.

Maybe she should look into getting that new bed.


End file.
